In the following essay excerpt, Pattison discusses how Hwang's play is inspired by traditional Japanese mythology and fairy tales. The idea for The Sound of a Voice is original to Hwang, but it is inspired by Japanese ghost stories and has the character of a myth or a fairy tale. With "only minor alteration," Hwang suggests in his introduction to FOB and Other Plays, "it could be set in a mysterious forest on any continent." A Japanese woman in her forties or fifties lives alone in a secluded forest. Her only joys are her flowers, her shakuhatchi (an end-blown bamboo flute), and the occasional visitors she receives. The play opens with the woman receiving a fifty-year-old male visitor. Throughout the early scenes of the play, the couple exchange polite conversation, but when the woman leaves the room, the man investigates the room and its contents, takes a flower...